Lee Strobel

Life

Strobel was born on January 25, 1952, in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He earned a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School. He then spent fourteen years as a journalist at several newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, where he served as legal affairs editor.

By his own account, he was originally an atheist. After his wife, Leslie, became a Christian, he began investigating the Bible's claims about Jesus in the manner of a reporter. After nearly two years of inquiry, he is said to have embraced the Christian faith in 1981, at the age of 29 (conversion).

Ministry and Accomplishments

In 1987 Strobel joined the staff of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, where he served as a teaching pastor (a pastor responsible for preaching and teaching) until 2000. That year he moved to Saddleback Church in California. In 2004 he stepped away from pastoral ministry to host Faith Under Fire, a Christian apologetics program (apologetics being the work of arguing for and defending the reasonableness of the faith) on PAX TV. In 2014 he became a teaching pastor at Woodlands Church in Texas and taught Christian thought at Houston Baptist University. In 2019 a center for evangelism and applied apologetics bearing his name was established at Colorado Christian University, with Strobel as its founding director.

His best-known work is The Case for Christ, published in 1998. Written in the style of a journalistic investigation, the book draws on interviews with a number of scholars to examine how reliable the Gospels are and what evidence exists for the resurrection of Jesus. He went on to publish a series of related books on subjects such as faith and the Creator. Four of his books received the Christian Book Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) (1994, 1999, 2001, and 2005). In 2017 the film The Case for Christ, which depicts his conversion, was released.

Influence on the Korean Church

In South Korea, Duranno Press has published Korean translations of his major works. The Korean edition of The Case for Christ (Yesuneun Yeoksada) first appeared in 2002, and a revised and expanded edition followed in 2021. Other works translated into Korean include The Case for a Creator, The Case for Easter, The Case for Miracles, The Case for Grace, and Becoming a Contagious Christian. The Korean publisher presents The Case for Christ as a book for unbelievers who regard the birth and death of Jesus as myth or exaggeration, as well as for believers whose faith is weak.

Assessment

Within evangelicalism, Strobel is regarded as a popular apologist who addresses skeptics' questions directly. The Washington Post once described him as one of the most popular apologists in the evangelical world.

Criticism has come from skeptics. New Testament scholar Robert M. Price, in The Case Against The Case for Christ, argued that Strobel misrepresented the state of biblical scholarship and rebutted the arguments of The Case for Christ chapter by chapter. A skeptics' organization that promoted Price's book criticized Strobel for relying on the statements of like-minded scholars rather than verifying claims himself, calling this the fallacy of appeal to authority.